lucid dreaming or dreaming i was lucid?

i’ve always been interested in dreams, but i’ve been only just been reading a lot and thinking a lot about lucid dreaming, since i stumbled upon this (wonderful, wonderful) site via a wikipedia splurge. (i have wikipedia splurges o.o random knowledge interests me, all right?)

but last night, i had a dream – i forget what it was about, some bizarre situation with an android family with a garden of tvs that didn’t even involve me – and i thought i realized that i might be dreaming. but everything just got fuzzier and the colors started to blur together, and my head was just so overwhelmed it was hard to focus on anything, like when you’re surronded by a very thick fog … so i thought, if i rubbed my hands together, and focused on that, maybe i could keep dreaming …

and i did. but i don’t remember what happened next, exactly. i had a very triumphant, now-i-can-conquer-the-world kind of feeling, made some kind of obscure metaphorical statement about america being a coffee stand, and decided i was going to go to italy through geneva, or some other kind of nonsense. i was rather giddy, and i certainly wasn’t my normal self, and i wasn’t what you’d call lucid, but i knew it was a dream.

because a moment later i woke up, and i scrambled for a notebook i thought i had next to the bed, but couldn’t find, so i could record what had happened and start a dream diary – and it was exactly how fumbling in the dark half-asleep should feel – and i wrote out a fragment or two …

and then i woke up.

;_; my subconcious hates me.

and now i’m so confused~! i don’t think i was ever fully lucid – just dreaming i was dreaming, if that makes any sense – but how can i tell the difference?

what is lucid dreaming like, exactly? i know my dream-self isn’t like my awake-self – she’s even more sensitive, prone to irrational emotional outbursts, and experiences things in sudden explosions of feeling and color more than in any kind of logical order – but if it was a lucid dream, would i be able to think through it and see things clearly like my awake-self, with more than just sensations and impressions, or would i still feel my way, like my dream-self, flowing along with the dream, occasionally exercising control, but still saying or doing things i might censor in real life? or both? in other words, who are you in a lucid dream?

(philosophical inquiry – which one is my true self? o.o save it for another forum, lady d …)

… and there’s all ready a topic on this ^^;; feels stupid

I think many people have these LD’s - usually a few days after they get fascinated with LD’ing. They’re very low-level, so you can’t take them as an example of high lucidity, which can be close to RL.

you’ll know. when (assuming you haven’t) had a real LD, you’ll be easily be able to tell them from an FLD

she’s raw, she’s still you, just occupies somewhere on the opposite side of the spectrum that you normally think of as you

in my experience. the answer is: both. which, to me, makes lucidity a truly beautiful experience. because i’m that raw me, and that refined, logical me at the same time. i think of my lucid self as a synthesis of my conscious and subconscious selves, but the two can’t really be separated. your subconscious will exhibit the behavior of your conscious self and vice versa, but when you’re both at the same time… WOW !!! it’s no wonder it’s common for people just starting out to only be able to retain lucidity for 0.3 seconds before getting too excited and waking up, so like i said… when you’re lucid… you’ll know

i think they both are your true self, just like the light of the sun and moon both have the same source but you experience them differently.

welcome to the forum, and best of luck with your LD practice

It’s not uncommon for me to have a dream about a lucid dream - though it sure can be frustrating. Some good advice would be to become familiar with some reality checks, and get used to using them when ever you’re thinking about lucid dreaming. The idea is to build an association between them, so next time you think (or dream) about lucid dreaming, you automatically perform a reality check. You might be surprised to find it doesn’t work as you expected it to.

Regardless, and as I always say, it’s a good sign of progress that the topic of lucid dreaming comes up by itself in a regular dream. It’s only a matter of time, and a little effort. Welcome to the forum.

Nice comparison.

It’s good to hear that Atheist, I’m a newbie up to my 3rd LD despite some significant amount of effort over the past few weeks, and last night I dreamt about asking two people if they had ever heard of LD, apparently they hadn’t so we talked about something else. Oh well.

I usually introduce people to LDs if I’ve already taken the initiative to ask them.

Third LD in a few weeks? All I can say is… I envy you! My first lucid dream came two months after I started my obsession, as far as I can remember.

Not quite a few weeks, it’s been a strange start. Basically I started practicing/learning about LD about 3 months ago, gave up practicing properly after 2 and a bit weeks telling myself I would wait until the next holidays to start properly. Then pretty much out of the blue 2 weeks after that I had 2 LDs in a week. Then passed about 2 months, the holidays came, I talked to my friend, had my 3rd LD that night, and since that day I have been practicing all the time but had no success in about 2 weeks so far. But now i’m determined to carry on for ever!

There’s another post somewhere about taking a break from inducing to have some LDs, this did work for me as you can see but it only allowed me to have 2 LDs, it was not a long term fix, I think maybe after having them I should have re-started my practices.

I’m still having problems grasping the difference between an LD and an FLD - and keep hearing the suggestion that I’ll just know the difference when I’ve experienced an LD!

I had my first LD late last year which I take to be a genuine one. I had no knowledge of the subject of lucid dreaming (wasn’t even sure if that was the right term for it) and had never taken any interest in it so it certainly wasn’t on my mind but I just had the experience of being in a place but knowing that I was really lying in bed - I found it quite incredible to be physically in this very real, very vivid environment but knowing that I wasn’t really there. Subsequent lucid dreams haven’t really had that ‘wow’ factor to anything like that extent - I just think ‘right, I’ll do a reality check to make sure or to see if reality checks really work’ or do something I’d planned to do beforehand, try to control the dream (or not, because early attempts to take too forceful control and completely change the dream had made me ‘lose’ the dream) or just have a wander round. However, I’m assuming the reason they don’t feel as amazing as my first experience is because they aren’t my first experience - I’m used to the idea of lucid dreaming (whereas it was quite mind blowing to me when it first happened without me really have much knowledge of the subject at all) and, after it’s happened a few times, it’s bound to lose that slightly, isn’t it? Or do people think these are false lucid dreams now that I’ve got an interest in them and have them on my mind? How do real LDs and FLDs differ? Does everyone agree that they are different things or do some people just think that you can have different levels of lucidity with different degrees of control?

i usually advise people to take a break when it sounds to me like they’re trying too hard. sometimes you just need to forget about something for a while and come back to it later with new, refreshed energy.

that isn’t to say that taking a break is in any way a “fix”, effort is still needed to discipline your mind

i agree with you… subsequent LDs aren’t quite as “mind blowing” as the first. but i don’t think that is at all a bad thing, in fact i think it’s very good. you have introduced your mind to something that at first shocked it, and now it’s starting to accept these occurences, and it’s when your mind starts to accept things that you can really begin to work with LDs, study them, experiment with them.

that being said, i have built up to another plateau so to speak, where i had another mind blowing lucid experience that i had to again get my mind acclimated to, so don’t think the mind blowing experiences stop after the first few LDs, in my experience, they’re just intermittent

anyway, i think you’re not understanding exactly what an FLD is (which is perfectly understandable because they’re a hard concept to grasp and i myself didn’t even believe there was such a thing until i had one one day)

i hate to echo what somebody else has already said, but you WILL be able to tell the difference between an FLD and a genuine LD (if you ever have an FLD that is). don’t confuse low-level LDs with FLDs

yes it is possible to have different levels of LDs with different levels of control, but these aren’t to be confused with FLDs which are dreams where you’re dreaming of being lucid (which is probably a horrible definition but i can’t really put it into words, you’d just have to experience one)

anyway good luck with your lucid adventuring

That sounds like something I would do.